Mayor Lionheart/Relationships

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Relationships

“Oh, I'm more of a glorified secretary. I think Mayor Lionheart just wanted the sheep vote. But he did give me that nice mug.”

―Bellwether on her position and Lionheart's opinion of her

Lionheart appears to treat his assistant mayor, Dawn Bellwether, with little respect, effectively ordering her around more like a secretary and a stooge than an actual assistant mayor, despite the hefty amount of work she puts into assisting him. In addition to dumping work on her and occasionally lashing out, he will also push her aside when in public, stealing the spotlight. Lionheart also has Bellwether's office located in a small utility room with a loud water heater and stacks of file boxes lining the wall outside her door. He also occasionally calls Bellwether "Smellwether", and though Bellwether claims this is just a "fun little name" he uses from time to time, he is only shown using it when he is particularly irritated with her. When she does similarly, calling him "Lionfart" as a joke, it is assumed that he took it badly from Bellwether's assertion that it was not a good day for her.

Lionheart ignoring Bellwether

However, though Lionheart tends to treat Bellwether unequally, it is possible that he is not quite as abusive to her as he may seem, as he does occasionally say "please" and "thank you" when giving her orders. Furthermore, Bellwether herself reveals that Lionheart once made an effort to actually get her a gift, though it was merely a mug labeled "World's Greatest Dad", with the "Dad" bit scribbled and replaced with "Assistant Mayor" through a marker.

Unbeknown to Lionheart, Bellwether secretly holds a fierce grudge against him due to his treatment of her, and secretly plots to exact revenge by taking over his position as Mayor.

However, Bellwether's sheer hatred of predators caused her to underestimate Lionheart when planning her scheme; the original plot was to get him removed from the office out of fear once predators were deemed too dangerous for society. Due to Lionheart covering up the savage attacks, Bellwether was forced to change the plan; she manipulated Judy's investigation of the savage predators from behind the scenes, thus leading Lionheart to be arrested for his illegal activities. However, though she successfully stripped him of his political status, Lionheart seemed content in the end and was apparently excepting of his own fate as long as the city was safe, thus invalidating Bellwether's supposed success in emotionally damaging him.

Judy Hopps is the ZPD's first rabbit officer, and is thus awarded her badge in a ceremony attended by the Mayor. His mammal inclusion initiative is cited as the reasoning behind her graduation, though to what extent this is true relies heavily upon how highly Judy's drill instructor thought of her by the end of her course. Nevertheless, Lionheart shows no signs of prejudice towards Judy, as he readily and quite happily accepts her into the ZPD, even rather proudly noting her to be the first rabbit to join the Force.

Judy is the officer who then ends up incriminating Lionheart in the missing mammal cases, and he is seen protesting for his innocence as the larger members of the ZPD take him away.

Lionheart isn't seen interacting with Bogo very often, but from what the two say about each other, they evidently do not quite see eye to eye. While Lionheart evidently respects Bogo as an incorruptible upholder of the law, this ends up causing a distinct lack of trust from Lionheart to Bogo, as he is unwilling to tell the Police chief about what he knows in regards to the missing mammals.

Bogo has a certain amount of animosity towards Lionheart; he seems to see Lionheart as an overbearing presence on the force, seeing Judy's assignment to him as an affront to his authority as police chief, saying "Do you think the mayor asked what I wanted before he assigned you to me?" While Bogo does not show any deal of gratification while he arrests the Mayor, it is assumed that he is glad to be rid of Lionheart's overbearing presence.

Lionheart is seen taking an afternoon off in order to meet with Madge to gauge progress on discovering what is making the predators go savage. He shares a fairly one-sided relationship with her, largely thanks to their respective size, allowing Lionheart to tower over Madge and for Madge to be fairly subservient to him. It is Madge's assertion that the savagery may be something to do with biology which ends up causing Lionheart's impeachment.